The Alice Behind Wonderland

Narrating his own work, Simon Winchester explores the story behind the book ALICE IN WONDERLAND by looking at the photography of its author, Charles Dodgson. Winchester focuses on one particular photo of Alice Liddell, the girl who became Alice in the story. He finds clues and meanings in every detail of the photo, in which Alice poses in the costume of a gamine, as suggested by Dodgson. There's some biographical information on Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, but the theories Winchester develops around the old photo are less than fascinating, and listening to them, as opposed to reading them and looking at the photography, borders on pointless. The basics on the lives of Dodgson and Liddell are there, but listeners likely won't want to sit through the rest. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

February 28, 2011
Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) explores the story behind Alice in Wonderland by focusing on an 1858 portrait taken by the eccentric Charles Dodgson—best known by his pen-name, Lewis Carroll. The subject of the photo is six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Oxford's Christ Church College who, encouraged by Dodgson, is dressed as a ragged beggar-maid—a costume inspired by a Tennyson poem. The dean's daughter provided Dodgson with not only the name and inspiration for the main character of his now infamous book but she also asked him to write it as a gift for her. Winchester's overall tone is unfortunately self-indulgent, and his take that Alice is seductive and coquettish in the 1858 photo is questionable. He stretches his brief essay with the differences between daguerreotype and calotype photographic images while skimping on Dodgson's relationship with Alice's mother. Readers will more likely be interested in Winchester's benign interpretation of Dodgson's character than his preoccupation with one particular photograph.